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District explains Qualtrics anonymity after staff concerns; board discusses USBA evaluation option
Summary
Superintendent secretary Marcy Hatch explained how district Qualtrics surveys are distributed and when responses remain anonymous. Board members discussed whether to use USBA for superintendent evaluations to add another independent layer.
Marcy Hatch, the superintendent’s secretary, explained how the district uses Qualtrics for surveys and why most district surveys are anonymous, addressing concerns that staff and community members had about retribution or identification.
Hatch walked the board through the typical distribution methods and said she uses the anonymous link in Qualtrics "99% of the time": "It cannot be tracked, and it can't be used to identify respondents," she said, while noting that responses that include free-text comments can sometimes reveal identities if respondents reference personal or local details. She described other distribution options — authenticated email lists, QR codes and embedding links in district communications — and said authenticated lists require an email address and are used rarely when email addresses must be collected.
Board members raised long-standing concerns about perceived fear of retribution in staff evaluations. Karen Cronin told the board she had heard from multiple staff: "I've had several people tell me that they don't dare put things down," reflecting reluctance to provide candid feedback. The board discussed whether to engage the Utah School Boards Association (USBA) to administer superintendent and executive evaluations as an independent third party. Several members recalled prior consideration of USBA administration and the extra time required; the board agreed to evaluate the option further and to consider USBA again as an independent mechanism to increase perceived impartiality.
Hatch described how the district exports survey results to Excel or PDF, cleans identifiable metadata and presents the de-identified results to administrators. She said the district will also try to stagger evaluation windows to improve response rates and will experiment with sending anonymous links via class rosters for teacher evaluations.
Ending: Board members asked staff to explore whether USBA-administered evaluations would be appropriate for future cycles and to continue improving distribution and response rates for anonymous internal surveys.
